Translate this posting

Friday, July 4, 2014

Food fight

Homo sapiens is the only animal that cooks.
Cooking a meal is almost a sacred symbol of our humanity.

It is also a profoundly social pastime. Primitive
peoples, like the Flintstones, might have shared meals with one another and
with strangers as a way to show that they were not going to fight them
for food. A meal was a pact of friendship and security.

And let’s not forget how central the devotional
meal is to many religions – Seder, for instance, and Holy Eucharist, which
harken back to the urge to share a meal with God.

Food is almost always shared. Meals are – at
least until the advent of career-minded parents and pervasive after-school
activities -- events when the whole family or community comes together.

So how did something as sacrosanct as the shared meal become
so commercialized?

Wayside taverns were a feature of civilizations from Romans
to Victorians. But eating in these was not what we’d think of today as a
“meal.” It was more like “feeding.”

Aside from travelers, for whom eating out was first
invented, few people – even today -- dine out from necessity.

It is the French who are at fault for where we are
today.

In the 18th century, they successfully sold the idea that
cooking is an art, and that enjoying food is an aesthetic experience worth
paying for. (It was in Paris, after all, that the word restaurant was first recorded in 1765 – rooted in the verb "to
restore.")

Because of the French, today’s romantic dinners,
birthday dinners, anniversary dinners, retirement dinners and all such communal
celebrations are taken out of the home and made into public ritual.

But how often do we have a truly “aesthetic
experience” worth paying for?

It seems that whenever my wife and I go out to a restaurant
for some discretionary dining, we discover when the check arrives that we could
have brought along a third person as our guest.

For example, two nights ago my wife took a friend out for a
birthday dinner in Manhattan. Each of them ordered the $30 prix fixe, which included appetizer, entrée and dessert. Here’s the
catch: each had a cocktail to start, at $17 per. For the $34 drink tab, my wife
could have treated two friends to dinner.

How about the lobster roll in Providence
for which I paid $25?

Here on Cape Cod, I can buy an entire lobster for five or
six dollars a pound. So why are restaurants marking up the price by three, four
or five times – and serving you far less than a pound? On a hot dog bun.

So on this Fourth of July weekend, I am declaring my own
Declaration of Independence. From the tyranny of restaurants. From roadside
eateries that charge white-tablecloth prices for meals served with plastic
utensils. From shelling out the price of the bottle for a single shot of vodka.

Yes, I am picking a food fight. No more discretionary dining
out. From now on, it’s restaurant-free feeding for me. (As soon as I sell my
wife on this, my latest lunacy.)

We might be coming full circle, though. At my
bed-and-breakfast on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, we have offered with
great success a gourmet tasting menu open to the public.

An example of people
going out to eat – but actually
eating in.

Maybe I will just join them at my own table and
pretend I’m eating out.